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CHAPTER ONE -  SHOOT TO KILL: THE PRELUDE TO GIBRALTAR
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Two months before the Gibraltar murders the British Attorney General,
Patrick Mayhew, officially closed the record on six murders by the RUC
in 1982 in Ireland and the Stalker inquiry into the killings. Mayhew
admitted that there was evidence of police officers perverting the
course of justice but said that because of 'considerations of national
security' no charges would be brought against officers involved in the
killings or the subse- quent conspiracy to obstruct justice. To
justify giving the state's seal of approval to the murderous actions
of its forces in Ireland he said: 'I have had to balance one harm to
national security against another'.

It is no surprise that two months later British forces claimed three
more lives, this time in Gibraltar. For 'national security' read
'state terrorism'. And if the government could get away with not only
the 1982 murders but also with a catalogue of official obstruction of
Stalker's inquiry, why notkeep on doing it?

The roots of the Gibraltar murders lie, of course, in the British
occupation of Ireland. But they lie most particularly in the Stalker
affair. For many years the nationalist people had believed that
individual Republican activists were targeted and eliminated by
British forces. But in 1982 a series of murders took place which made
this more than a suspicion: within a one month period six men were
shot dead by the RUC.

On 11 November 1982 Eugene Toman, Gervaise McKerr and Sean Burns were
shot dead as they drove in Armagh. They were cut down in a hail of 109
bullets. All three were unarmed. They were shot by members of the RUC
E4A unit, an SAS-trained squad. Although the RUC at first claimed that
they had been on routine patrol and that the car had accelerated
through a roadblock, it was later revealed that the RUC had been
tailing the three for three days. Moreover, witnesses denied the
existence of a roadblock. Toman was found lying outside the car having
been killed by a shot to the heart. Witnesses had heard two bursts of
shots separated by two minutes. Three RUC officers were prosecuted for
the murder of Eugene Toman but all were acquitted. The RUC claimed
that they had information that two of the three were armed and were on
their way to commit a murder. This explanation has come to sound very
familiar.

On 24 November 1982 17-year-old Michael Tighe and Martin McAuley were
ambushed and Tighe shot dead as they entered a farm building which was
under RUC surveillance. Not only was this a carefully prepared ambush
but M15 had actually bugged the farm building in which Tighe died. The
RUC claimed that Tighe had pointed a rifle at them but forensic
evidence contradicted their story.

On 12 December 1982 Seamus Grew and Roddy Carroll were killed when E4A
opened fire on their car. Both men were unarmed. The RUC immediately
said that the two had driven through a police roadblock but later
admitted this was a deliberately false version of events. In fact the
car had been tailed north and south of the border. An unmarked police
surveillance vehicle had intercepted the car and police had shot both
men dead. Carroll was killed by 15 shots fired from six to ten feet
away. Grew was found not in the car but face upwards on the road
having been shot in the back of the head. Forensic evidence proved
that he had been shot from three feet away whilst out of the car. One
RUC officer was tried for Grew's murder and acquitted having said that
he fired because he believed 'his life was in danger'. Again, the
familiar story. The Armagh Coroner resigned due to 'grave
irregularities' in the RUC files on this case. It should also be noted
that Seamus Grew had been the object of illegal Army actions in the
past. In 1984 Captain Fred Holroyd, a former Army intelligence officer
in Ireland, reported that in 1974 three Protestants were hired by the
Army to go into the Twenty Six Counties and kidnap Grew to bring him
north of the border.

Later it emerged that E4A had gone on this bloody trail of revenge
after three RUC officers were killed by the IRA. The RUC paid an
informer to set up Toman and Burns. E4A was effectively a covert
police murder squad organised on military lines and were ordered to
conceal what they did behind the Offical Secrets Act. Operating from
unmarked cars, they were heavily armed with Sterling submachine guns
and RUCer high velocity rifles and handguns. After each killing the
RUC issued a false cover story, removed witnesses and destroyed
forensic evidence. A forged RUC report was compiled on Michael Tighe
after his death (he had no Republican connections) in order to
implicate him. During one of the trials RUC Deputy Chief Constable
Michael McAtamney said that E4A were trained by the SAS and that the
training was based on the premise that once you have decided to fire
you shoot to take out our enemy. 'Do you mean permanently?', he was
asked. 'Yes', he replied.

So great was the outcry about these cases that in 1984 John Stalker,
Deputy Chief Constable of Manchester, was asked to conduct an
investigation.

Stalker dug too deep. He found that the prosecution papers for the
trials of the RUC men 'bore no resemblance to my idea of a murder pro
secution' and that he 'could see clearly why the prosecutions had
failed'. He found that vital forensic evidence (bullets, cartridge
cases and other evidence) were removed from the scenes of the
killings; that vital witnesses were never interviewed and there were
'shockingly low standards' of inquiry. In the course of his
investigation he met outright hostility and obstruction from all
levels of the RUC.

He found that after the killings of Toman, Burns and McKerr, the RUC
men responsible left the scene to be debriefed by Special Branch.
Detectives investigating the shootings were denied access to them,
their weapons and car for days after this. He found that deliberately
false cover stories were put out by the RUC.

Most dangerous for the RUC (and M15) Stalker discovered that the farm
building where Tighe was killed had been bugged and that a tape of the
shooting existed. After months of wrangling, the RUC Chief Constable,
Sir Jack Hermon, said the tape would only be released to Stalker if
the Attorney General signed a certificate stating that it was in the
national interest. This was done. But just before Stalker was due to
return to Ireland to get the transcript of the tape, he was removed
from the inquiry on spurious charges of misconduct. Not only was he
closing in on the tape, but also he wanted to question the upper
echelons of the RUC. He was simply too dangerous to be allowed to
remain in charge of the inquiry.

Far from Stalker getting the RUC culprits for the murders, the British
government got Stalker. Stalker is clear about this: 'I believe that
in April 1986 a government decision was made to end my involvement in
the enquiry'.

Whilst Stalker not surprisingly failed to find evidence of a formal
shoot-to-kill policy, he did find evidence of deliberate
assassination. Of the case of Michael Tighe he had this to say:

    'I also passionately believe that if a police force could, in cold
    blood, kill a seventeen~year~old youth with no terrorist or
    criminal convictions, and then plot to hide the evidence... then
    the shame belonged to us all. This is the act of a Central
    American assassination squad.'

These are not the words of a government critic but of a former
Assistant Chief Constable, an establishment man to the core.

The similarities to the events in Gibraltar are striking: false cover
Stories; surveillance leading to shootings; shootings justified on the
grounds of non-existent 'threats' to the lives of the police; shooting
continued until the victim is dead, often finishing them off on the
ground; forensic evidence destroyed; witnesses not followed up;
murderers removed rapidly from the scene for debriefing. All of these
things happened in the 1982 killings and in Gibraltar in 1988. And
there was something else in common: a prolonged and elaborate
cover-up. The British government was prepared to go to enormous
lengths to prevent the truth about the 1982 killings emerging. It was
prepared to claim 'national security' to justify its murderous
actions. Likewise in Gibraltar.

There is another significant factor in common: the SAS which did the
killings in Gibraltar trained E4A in Ireland. A member of E4A revealed
in court that:

    'One feature of this training is that the traditional police
    concept of the use ofminimum force is abandoned. In one exercise
    officers have to burst into what is known as the "killing room"
    and fire a set number of shots into a dummy within a certain time.
    The exercise, aimed at developing "firepower, speed and
    aggression", is repeated until the officer meets the standard.'

The SAS, like its murderous offspring E4A, does not take prisoners. It
is, in effect, a highly-trained assassination squad.

The British government took a calculated risk by organising such an
obvious cover-up in the Stalker affair. And because they got away with
it, they were better prepared to get away with murder in Gibraltar. In
November 1988, six years after their deaths and two months after the
Gibraltar inquest, the inquest into the deaths of McKerr, Toman and
Burns opened in Ireland. The British government produced Public
Interest Immunity Certificates to prevent questions being raised that
concerned 'national security', ic the truth. They had learned the
usefulness of this trick in Gibraltar. Events had come full circle.
'Central American-style assassination squads' are alive and well and
flourishing in Britain, organised by the British government.
